Texas Democratic Rep. James Talarico raises $6.2 million in first three weeks of U.S. Senate run

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State Rep. James Talarico raised $6.2 million in the first three weeks of his bid for Senate, his campaign announced Wednesday, a massive haul that far outpaces the earliest fundraising numbers tallied by recent Democratic statewide hopefuls.

The staggering total, easily more than Talarico has brought in across his seven years in the Legislature, establishes him as an immediate fundraising juggernaut. Talarico’s foe in the Democratic primary, former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, took two months to raise the same amount last cycle when he kicked off his challenge to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. Beto O’Rourke, who set a new standard for Democratic fundraising in his 2018 run against Cruz, needed nine months to reach the threshold.

The donations came from more than 125,000 individual contributors across more than 230 Texas counties and all 50 states, according to Talarico’s campaign. Almost every contribution — 98% — was for $100 or less, with teachers making up the largest share of donors. Talarico’s campaign said it was the most a Senate candidate of either party has raised in the first quarter of their campaign in Texas history.

“We’re underdogs in this fight against billionaire mega-donors and their puppet politicians, but more than one hundred thousand people have answered the call to build a new kind of politics,” Talarico, a former public school teacher, said in a statement. “This is truly a campaign of, by, and for the people.”

Talarico launched his Senate bid on Sept. 9, joining Allred and retired astronaut Terry Virts in the Democratic primary. The four-term state lawmaker from Austin has made a name for himself as a deeply Christian Democrat who has frequently gone viral on social media for debating Republicans in the Texas House and on cable television.

He has also gained attention for decrying the influence of hard-right megadonors in Texas politics, and has pledged not to take contributions from corporate PACs in his run for Senate. That online fame has yet to translate among the broader Texas electorate, with 42% of Democrats saying they did not know of Talarico or had no opinion of him in an August poll — taken before his campaign launch — by The Texas Politics Project.

Federal candidates are required by Oct. 15 to disclose their campaign fundraising and spending from July through September, though campaigns often announce topline numbers before filing official paperwork with the Federal Election Commission.

Those third-quarter reports will also provide the first look at Allred’s fundraising numbers since he launched his Senate bid on July 1, the start of the reporting period. The former Dallas congressman had yet to announce his own campaign haul.

Allred pulled in almost $100 million during his 2024 run, helping make the race the most expensive Senate contest in the nation. Still, he lost to Cruz by almost nine percentage points, as Donald Trump carried the state by nearly 14 points.

That came two years after O’Rourke fell to Gov. Greg Abbott by 11 points, despite outraising the Republican by $3 million during the race.

Allred will be rebuilding his war chest essentially from scratch, having reported just $55,000 on hand at the end of June.

Talarico’s fundraising abilities, meanwhile, were less clear before this first three-week period, with state lawmakers typically raising paltry sums compared to statewide candidates. He was also barred from raising money during the first half of this year due to the fundraising moratorium imposed on lawmakers during Texas’ legislative session.

In early September, before he launched his Senate campaign, Talarico said he had over $1 million in his state account. Federal rules do not allow him to directly transfer the money to his Senate campaign account, though he can refund it to his donors and “coordinate arrangements” to have them contribute to his federal account. Individual donors can give up to $3,500 to a federal campaign each election.

Talarico previously announced that he had roughly matched the sum in his state account within the first 12 hours of his Senate campaign, raising over $1 million in small-dollar donations.

In the Republican primary, incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and his rival, Attorney General Ken Paxton, had yet to announce their third-quarter fundraising hauls. From April through June, Paxton raised $2.9 million, while Cornyn took in about $2.7 million in direct fundraising and transfers from his joint fundraising committee.

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